Which Kentucky Derby Contenders Rank Most-Tested?

by Jeremy Plonk

April 16, 2018

It’s the Monday after the final preps are run and you still have three weeks until the Kentucky Derby field takes shape at the entry box. Chances are, if you’re a die-hard like me, you already have a sense of what you think of this 2018 crop. Your appreciation should be deep; it’s a darned-good one, even if some of the leading players like Justify and Magnum Moon are historically light on experience.

That led me to wonder just who has faced the toughest competition to date? Often you’ll hear token statements like: We can’t judge this crop until much later in the season to know how good it is. Well, la di da. What good does that do anyone in 3 weeks?

And since we dissect all the angles between now and the first Saturday in May, because, that’s what we do, I'll try to shed light on the experience of this crop. I decided this weekend to dig through the past performances and plot out every stakes start for every one of the Top-20 prospects as of April 15. The idea is to see who has faced the most quality competition. How do we measure quality? Well, the Derby points chase does that for us already. Those who are here have earned their way here. Score in the Top-20 in points and consider yourself a quality member of this crop.

For the purpose of this exercise, every stakes start is worth at least 1 point (counting yourself as the horse who competed). For each additional eventual Derby starter you have faced in a race, you add another point. It’s not going to give us any great revelation to the most talented or fastest horse, just simply who may be the most battle-tested. If you believe in strength of schedule and durability, maybe this can shed some light on horses you may not have considered. Of course, a tough-but-sidelined past rival does you no good here -- like McKinzie -- so there are some holes in the process. But we're not looking for bulletproof theories in handicapping, because there are none. It's about getting the best feel you can and doing the most with it when it comes time to wager.

That said, the most tested 3-year-old in this year’s Derby by points is Free Drop Billy, who scores a 21. He’s made 7 stakes starts in 8 races overall and has top-4 finishes in 6 of them. And interestingly, every one of his stakes attempts also featured at least 1 other eventual Kentucky Derby entrant (based on the current Top-20 points list). The horse he edged as most-tested is Firenze Fire, who has made 8 stakes starts in 9 outings and scored 20 points. Races like the Withers and Jerome were ones where he was the only eventual Top-20 performer and didn’t do him as much good in terms of this study.

The remainder of the leading 5 most-tested runners are Enticed (16), Flameaway (15) and Bravazo (15). Enticed racked up his 16 points in 5 stakes appearances, which means he averaged more than 2 other eventual Top-20 contenders in each of those stakes. There were no free lunches on his schedule. Flameaway made 8 stakes bids to notch his 15 points, which means there were less than 1 other eventual Top-20 performer on average in each of his attempts. Compare that with Bravazo, whose 15 points came in just 5 attempts, which means he averaged 2 other Top-20 rivals in each stakes bid.

The horses who had the toughest cumulative stakes schedules were Enticed, Good Magic and Quip, the only horses to average more than 2 eventual Top-20 rivals per stakes attempt and each has made 3 or more stakes bids so far.

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5.1.2018

The Kentucky Derby starting gate, when full, comes down to the 12 haves and the 8 have nots. After all, posts 5-16 have won 30 of the last 36 editions. That’s 60% of the field, but 83% of the winners. You prefer not to be in posts 1-4 or 17-20, the dozen between them have had varying degrees of success.
Scanning the draw sheet from this morning’s proceedings in Louisville, the 8 have-not slots were filled by horses considered by most to be tosses or very fringe players except for three. No sleep was lost by Firenze Fire, Free Drop Billy, Promises Fulfilled, Flameaway or Combatant drawing poorly. But the posts for Solomini (17, which has NEVER won), Vino Rosso (18) and Noble Indy (19) may be enough to help whittle a very tough field down by at least a few talented sophomores.
Those were the statistical “losers” at the draw. And while most will blanket-accept Mendelssohn to be well-drawn in post 14, given the extra space to his right for the gap between the starting gates, it’s notable that the 14 post has not won since Carry Back in 1961. The 15-hole, with the open space to the left of it, has won 5 times. Considering everyone wants to turn left out of the gate and get closer to the rail, it makes sense that the 14 might not be the picnic you think when a six-pack comes charging into open space adjacent to you.
The Derby pace definitely shaped itself by this post draw. Promises Fulfilled and bullet-working Flameaway were my two leading front-end players going in, and they drew next to one another inside in posts 3-4. They have to set a rapid tempo. Also, rail-drawn Firenze Fire isn’t a speedball, but his jockey Paco Lopez is perhaps as big of a ‘send’ rider as we have in the game. He’s going to Quarter-Horse out of there for safety and as is his want. Then you have big, burly Justify in post 7, who gets to sit outside of those, avoid their inner push early and can take the measure of leading contender Audible in post 5 just to his inside. This was a great draw for Justify. No complaints either for Audible, who leaves from the most popular post 5 (10 wins) and the hole that produced Always Dreaming last year for his trainer Todd Pletcher.
An interesting aside: the 6-horse auxiliary gate is comprised of horses from Hall of Famers Bob Baffert, Jerry Hollendforfer and Steve Asmussen as well a trio from sure-fire, first-ballot Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher. Rest assured, there’s never been an auxiliary gate with 6 horses having trainers who account for 33,000 wins when you triple-up Pletcher’s total.

4.30.2018

The Kentucky Derby gives you 20 options of which to choose, making it a purely unique race on the calendar. But its wagering format is rather every-day. You’re quite familiar with each choice on the menu, but should you be betting the Derby like you do every other day?
Let’s look at each wager type and how it may or may not fit your plans this – or any – first Saturday in May.
Win: The game’s oldest standby remains your best friend for sustained success as a horseplayer; but in this one-shot deal, it serves a more subdued purpose. You see, 4-to-1 still pays $10 here as it does in the sixth this afternoon at Anytrack USA in a 6-horse field. True, you may get $10 on a horse who should pay $6 and that’s value. But how much are you betting on the nose to make any real hay out of that value? A $100 win bet gets you $500 vs. $300. That additional $200 isn’t going to sustain you past Sunday in your wagering, and you had to beat 19 other horses to unearth said “value.” Unless you like horses 20, 30, 40 or 50-1, my advice is you have to do better than this pool.
Place: You’re much better off doing an exacta back-wheel with all key contenders (or a total wheel) than to bet any serious amount of money to place. A $1 exacta averages about $400 the last 25 years and even about $150 in the current chalky era. You’d need to get $15-$20 to place on your pick to net the same thing as a full back-wheel, and the latter gives you the chance for a whopper that the place never will.
Show: Leave this to the amateurs. Even big bettors should shy from confident plunges with 19 rivals. You can find easier ways to hit $5-$6-$7 returns in your gambling life.
Exacta: Remains an excellent and affordable step into the exotics realm. It obviously marries the handicapping talents of win and place assessment while expanding the value greatly if you’re willing to accept some additional risk. The big mistake people make here is trying to cash the exacta instead of cashing out on the exacta. That is, don’t play a bazillion $1 combos and wind up hitting a $450 exacta with $45 in plays. That’s only 10-1 on your money and, again, a successful Derby should not be something that only sets you up for a few days of wagering with a modest profit.
Trifecta: The trifecta has become the most popular Derby exotic in terms of handle, surpassing the amount bet on exactas in recent years. That’s not true on a regular card, where exacta handle nearly always trumps tris. The 20-horse field attracts jackspot seekers, and the trifecta has the ability to cover a decent amount of combinations on a more reasonable budget than supers and super high 5s. Consider a key horse on top with 6 horses underneath is just $30 for a buck. Taking your top pick on top, 3 horses in second and ALL in third is $54 for $1. A less-confident 5-horse box is 60 combos. When you see an average return of $11k since 1995 and last year’s paying $16k even with a favorite on top, this is the pool where you get the most bang for your buck and the public now sees that.
Superfecta: Because of field size and an additional row of combinations, costs escalate quickly here vs. the trifecta, but so, too, do the rewards. It paid $75k last year with Always Dreaming on top as the chalk, and has averaged $81k throughout its history. And there have been some lobsters - $860k in 2005 if you had the right house number or clairvoyance. If you are the kind of horseplayer spending $400-$500 or more on the Derby, the superfecta could fit into your plans. Definitely you’re encouraged to take at least one swipe of your leading ticket here because you might be walking around lucky and not know it.
Super High 5: With an unwieldy amount of combinations and a pool size remarkably about 1/25th of even the superfecta, there’s not enough going for this wager to accept any significant risk. There are more than 1.8 million combinations in a pool that totaled only $400k last year. Skip this.
Daily Double: This can be a good alternative to the win bet, a one-race parlay in essence. Consider the race before and after the Derby if you have a strong opinion, or the Kentucky Oaks on the Oaks-Derby double. Here you might be able to compound some additional value, but do so with a weighted wager appropriate of returning more than just a good day at the track. You’re looking at $10-$20-$50-$100 double-type bets where you pound an opinion. If you’re going to play a series of $1 and $2 doubles, you might as well be betting on the win nose and take the short-term overlays.
Pick Three: The two-day bet linking the Oaks-Turf Classic-Derby is a bit gimmicky and really depends on the strength of your opinions in the turf race and if there could be any weather changes day over day. Whether the two-day or traditional pick threes including the Derby, keep your combinations limited and this can be a good value play; but spread thinner and you’re better off playing the daily doubles with more weight each.
Pick Four: This wager handles twice as much as the pick five traditionally and ends with the Kentucky Derby. It’s really about your feel for the race that precedes the pick four and starts the pick five. If you have a single in that race, you have to try the pick five and its much larger return possibilities. If there are multiple horses in that opening pick five leg, you lean to the pick four instead.
Pick Five: See the pick four, the preferred play, unless you have a very strong feel for the first leg of the pick five.
Pick Six: If you’re into jackpot bets, you can probably do better in the superfecta in the Kentucky Derby race itself. Pick six handle last year was $1.1 million, less than one-third of the pick four ending in the Derby and 1/13th of what was in the Derby race superfecta pool. There are better days to play the pick six. The only silver lining is that usual pick six sharks may not be in the pool as much as you’d think.